Vaccines help parents protect their children from more than 17 serious diseases during infancy, childhood, and the teen years, with additional vaccines recommended in adulthood to maintain protection throughout life.
Vaccine-preventable diseases still pose a real risk to children and families. Some, such as the flu and whooping cough, are common in the United States and can spread easily in schools and communities. Others, like polio and measles, are now rare here but continue to circulate globally and can cause severe illness, hospitalization, and even death in people of all ages.
